"Ghetto blaster" has unpleasant racial connotations. It's the kind of term you'd expect your white boomer parents to throw around, as they shake their heads in looming fear that their neighborhood might degentrify. "Boom box" is considered more racially neutral so you will hear it more in the USA.

I totally disagree. I just cannot see a racial aspect in the word "Ghetto blaster". What makes you think so? Was it only used by white old men? Or by middle aged cyan women?

Using the term "ghetto" for predominantly-black neighborhoods is... one of those things black people can do that white people can't. This is less of a problem in other anglospheric countries, which don't have the history of oppression of and discrimination against black people, including segregation into specific neighborhoods and "white flight", that the United States has -- so words like "ghetto blaster" have less bite abroad than they do here.

We always called them ghettoblasters in the UK too, though the small ones, and mono speaker+radio+tape like the photos of mono sets in the article, were always just "the radio" or "the tape". Ghetto blaster was for the big stereo ones. Always stereo.

Boombox was a name that came from US TV and film, and only started to be the name retrospectively looking back. I don't remember anyone here actually using boombox back then.

We used the term in the US as well, boombox was just more common and TV English. A good deal of kids called them ghettoblasters. Less commonly used but heard from time to time was JamBox and BumpBox. IIRC GhettoBlaster seemed to be used in the early 80's more where BoomBox and the others seemed to be used in the very late 80's and 90's but my memory could be wrong. I do remember when I was younger them being almost exclusively referred to as GhettoBlasters.

There is also yet another version of the *box name, but I'll not post it here as it's deeply offensive.